Money worries18/09/2008 4:24 pm

Sorry it’s been so long since the last post – I came back from holiday and into a couple of weeks of insane busy-ness (I’ve posted before about this, so I won't get into it now, although the stories you sent me about your own experiences of chronic busy-ness were so interesting I will definitely be returning to this soon).

One of the first things I noticed when I came back, of course, was the new anxiety, which suddenly seemed to be everywhere. I’d been on a media diet while I was on holiday, so the daily dose of scary headlines hit me with force. “The world’s changed since you’ve been away” said my publisher.

Which is true. But it’s not so much the world that’s changed as our view of it – we still don’t know what the fallout from the current economic upheaval will be. And yet, we’re worried. We fear the worst. Just like the economy, the way we live our lives is so much about confidence, about how we perceive the world and our place in it. And our confidence – in the systems we don’t fully understand but take for granted, and in the people who run them – has taken a devastating body blow.

There are people directly affected by events like the fall of the Lehmans Brothers bank, who have every reason to feel shaken and angry at the moment. But there are a lot more of us who haven’t been, yet who feel shocked and anxious because of it: we are sure we WILL be affected, though we don’t know how; we are worried that it MIGHT lead to more widespread turmoil in the economy and that some of this is BOUND to affect us. I have no more idea than anyone what the eventual outcome of all this will be, but there are a couple of things we can do to deal with it, that I think will be useful whatever happens.

First: remember things feel most frightening for most of us not because of what HAS happened, but because of what we fear MIGHT happen - and so, remember, might NOT happen. Because there’s so much uncertainty, the world
feels less solid and reliable – but the key word here is feels. The world has ALWAYS been unreliable and unpredictable. Sometimes looming threats are realised, often, they’re not – or ‘the worst’ if or when it comes, is rarely as bad as we fear.

Rosie Ifould, our deputy features editor, was telling her mother how generally worrying everything feels at the moment, and her mother repeated what her own mother had told her “People have been telling me the world was going to end since the day I was born, and I’ve lived through two world wars and it hasn’t ended yet”. Which is, oddly, both very true and very comforting.

During the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, many people were so concerned about the threat of nuclear war they decided not to have children, because what was the point of bringing them into a world about to end? Before the Millenium, perfectly reasonable people became consumed with anxiety about technological meltdown, with significant numbers leaving their jobs, stockpiling food and even building survival shelters.

But others joined CND marches and campaigned for nuclear disarmament, or educated themselves about “millennium bugs”. Instead of retreating in panic, they channelled their anxiety into action, and helped find a solution.

Anxiety is a very useful emotion, in its place. It alerts us to potential dangers, so we can take action to retaliate or protect ourselves: find out all you can about the arcane, deadly boring world of finance (or is that just me?) and make decisions accordingly – a lot of the newspapers have been doing excellent, readable guides which, aware from the scary headlines, are actually reassuring as well as helpful.

Our reality is shaped by our beliefs. We can’t make ourselves believe that our economy is in great shape or that the world money markets aren’t in turmoil, but we can make ourselves believe that what’s really hurting us now is our anger – with governments, and bankers - our fear, and our discomfort with uncertainty. Managing those, productively and proactively, is the real key to riding out the credit crunch.